Knapsack Treks
  • Detian Waterfall Then & Now
  • Good Vices
  • Live From Lukla
  • NDP – National Day Pendaki
  • Trip Reports
    • Australia
      • Aussie Odyssey Part 1, Uluru, Kata Tjuta
      • Aussie Odyssey Part 2 Kings Canyon
      • Aussie Odyssey Part 3 Kangaroo Island
      • Dunes Downunder Part 1
      • Dunes Downunder Part 2
      • Dunes Downunder Part 3
    • Climbing Tianyou Peak 天游峰 @ Wuyi Shan 武夷山
    • Europe
      • My Greek Odyssey (Athens & Acropolis)
      • My Greek Odyssey (Delphi)
      • My Greek Odyssey (Meteora)
      • My Greek Odyssey (Mt Olympus)
      • My Greek Odyssey (Pella – birthplace of Alexander the Great)
      • My Greek Odyssey (Thessaloniki)
    • India
      • A Tale of Two Jahans
      • Akbar The Great
      • Dungeshwari – where mistakes are made and corrected
      • Horriday In India – Trains
      • Sarnath – first lesson
      • Shimla – legacy of British India
      • Taj Mahal
      • The Mahabodi Temple, Bodhgaya
      • Varanasi, a city as old as time
    • Indonesia
      • Beautiful Bali 2019
        • Batur Mountain & Lake
        • Kuta Sunset
        • Marvellous Munduk
        • Nusa Penida 1
        • Nusa Penida 2
        • Tirta Gangga
      • Dieng Antiquities
      • Gedung Songo
      • Gunung Lawu 2019
      • Sex & Temples
        • Candi Kethek & Ceto
        • Candi Sukuh
      • Back In Mt Bromo With A Kid In Tow 1
      • Back In Mt Bromo With A Kid In Tow 2
    • Kyrgyzstan, Land of Yurts, Horses, Vodka and 美女😆
      • Song Kul Lake Horse Trek
      • Beautiful Bishkek
      • The Ala Kul Lake Trek Via Telety & Karakol Valley
      • Dungan Mosque Kyrgyzstan
      • Holy Trinity Cathedral, Karakol
    • Magical Myanmar 2019
      • Hsipaw Trek
      • Paya Ko Thaung
      • Pining For Pyin Oo Lwin
      • Sunset In Sittwe
      • The Goteik Viaduct
      • Yangon Memories
    • Nepal
      • Everest Three Passes Trek Nepal
      • Tilicho Lake
      • Annapurna On Wheels With Two Kids In Tow
      • Gosainkund Winter Trek
      • Lost In Lumbini
    • The Water Curtain Cave
    • Kunming, Dali With A Kid In Tow
  • Wacky Workouts
    • Climb Stairs
    • Great Body Weight Exercise
    • Metabolic Principle – Fat Burn
    • Metabolic Principles – Muscles
    • Pull Ups Step By Step
    • Push Up Variations
    • Pushup Variations
    • Working With Elastics
  • About The Author
  • Knapsack Books
  • Fighting Fit
    • 1000 Squats
    • Alternatives For Prevention of AMS?
    • Buffering Your Blood
    • Carbo-loading: The Real Thing
    • Cold Dips
    • Fluid Replacement
    • Food For Hikes – Sweet Potatoes
    • Healthy Coffee?
    • High Altitude Diarrhoea
    • Jumpstart Cream
    • L-Carnitine
    • Low Carb Myths & Risks
    • MacRitchie To Bukit Timah Hike
    • Preventing Blisters
    • Sandfly Bites
    • Cheating AMS
  • Gear & Stuff
    • Choosing Footwear
    • Cooking Set
    • Cushion Gloves
    • Dressing Right For The Himalayas
    • Gelert Boots
    • High Fashion (Frogg Toggs)
    • Hiking Footwear Cheap & Good
    • How To Clean Mouldy Slides
    • My Neat Knapsack
    • New Hiking Boots From Decathlon
    • The Humble SAF Combat Boot
    • The Thermos Effect
    • Custom Made Hiking Boots
  • The Aging Adventurer
    • Bye Bye Bunions
      • 6 Weeks Post-op
      • Day 1
      • Day 2
      • Day 7
      • One Month Post-op
      • Trying On My Boots & Thongs
      • Week 3
    • Clogged Arteries: everyone has them!
    • Don’t Lose That Muscle
    • Foot On Ice
    • How Exercise Affects Blood Pressure
    • Keeping Fit Past 70
    • Secret To Burning Fat
    • Stairs Workout
    • Strength Training
    • The Best Doctors In The World
    • Toes & Poles
    • Too Old To Run?
    • Training For Seniors
  • Legends
    • Ernest Shackleton (1874-1922)
      • The Imperial Trans-Antarctic Expedition
    • Gigi The Bikini Hiker
    • Khoo Swee Chiow – K2, the ultimate peak
    • Xiao Peng 小鹏
    • Yu Chun Shun 余纯顺
    • Lei Dian Sheng 雷殿生
      • Horsehair & Blisters
      • Trust & Kindness
  • Other Sites by Chan Joon Yee
    • Chan Joon Yee On Homecooking
    • Chan Joon Yee On Social Issues

Login

  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.org
Tweets by toothfully
Follow me on twitter

Magical Myanmar 2019

Every adventure comes with a certain degree of risk which is impossible to measure or predict. What about prevention? Well, on a climbing trip, there are certainly some measures that can be taken to significantly lower the risk of injury. Apart from the elements, human error can also result in nasty slips and falls.

Other mistakes (largely preventable) include walking into the crater of an active volcano like Whakaari – which can be tempting as it’s not even a mountain. The thing is, you never walk into the crater of an active volcano, period. There is no escape in the event of an eruption.

What about places with ongoing military conflict? Like volcanoes, there are different alert levels. It can be an full scale eruption or a full scale war (stay away!) or it could be just a bit of venting or sporadic, small scale skirmishes. The benefit of hindsight aside, Whakaari had an alert level of 2 on that fateful day, the same alert level as Gunung Agung (Bali) which had an exclusion zone 4km in radius imposed. Why did people think it was safe to go down the crater of Whakaari? As for Myanmar, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) has warned that there is fighting in northern Rakhine State. Mrauk U is deemed unsafe.

Experience tells me how to interpret that. It means that the place is generally safe, but …. just don’t be at the wrong place at the wrong time. With sporadic fighting over just a couple of small sites within a wide area, the chances of getting yourself killed is probably as high as that of striking lottery. As a resident, I would be quite worried, but as a tourist staying for just a couple of days, the risk is very small. The air ticket to Sittwe that I booked with Myanmar National Airlines was my lottery ticket and not surprisingly, I didn’t strike.

Some 6 years ago, I published Spellbound in Chiangmai, a collection of short stories depicting the misadventures of simple and sheltered Singaporeans stumbling and fumbling in complex and enigmatic Thai society.

One of the stories in the book tell the tale of a wandering Singaporean who fell in love with a Burmese girl at the Thai border town of Mae Sai. She was one of the many “undocumented” workers at a Chinese restaurant. When war erupted across the border, the Thai authorities pushed all these “undocumented” migrant workers back into Myanmar. By the time our “hero” arrived at Mae Sai again, the gate at the border was already shut.

The Singaporean in the story was braver than most of his kind, but he was still totally at a loss. There was no police he could turn to. The government had better things to do than to help him with his personal problem and the solution to that problem was completely out of his league.

Beautiful (16)

This was a war zone daring him to enter. He was as frightened as he was anxious over the well-being of the person he loved. No amount of military training prepared him for anything like this. Having lived in a safe, sheltered, orderly, predictable and sanitary environment all his life, he was not prepared to play the real hero in the romantic war movies he had watched.

At this point, a rival who had been keeping his thoughts to himself confessed to his feelings for the same girl. He was a descendant of Chinese refugees who had fled to Myanmar and then to Thailand. Unlike the Singaporean, he was prepared to risk arrest, cross illegally into Myanmar and rescue the girl, marry her and give her Thai citizenship so she could remain in Thailand.

Could our cowardly “hero” do the same and bring his poor Burmese girlfriend back to Singapore? He gave up. His inconvenient love story would have to be left for someone more gutsy to complete. Deep down, he was just like most of his countrymen, a wimp who would freak out at the first sign of trouble; only able to thrive on a safe, obstacle-free path.

I don’t normally discuss politics on this blog, but too many people around me shy away from “trouble” and try to explain their apathy by smugly interpreting the courage and commitment of dissidents in Hong Kong and Taiwan as foolishness. How nice if one could just bask in riches and enjoy the bliss of ignorance and ideological slavery.

But “trouble” and conflicts occur everywhere in the real world – including advanced countries that don’t get any travel advisory. On the streets of Taiwan, Tokyo, Hong Kong, London, Paris, Seoul, Jakarta (yes, somebody warned me of violence on my last trip to Indonesia) and Kuala Lumpur. It even happens in mainland China, except that it’s covered up. Strangely, “trouble” is only unthinkable in safe and sanitary Singapore. What’s normal disruption in the rest of the world can be deemed catastrophic in my country. How “lucky” we are to be able to run undisturbed on our hamster wheels.

Back to the topic, how safe or dangerous is Myanmar if you go off the beaten track? It’s an impossible question to answer as there are too many factors at play. Nobody can guarantee your safety or injury. But would you wait for people to give you guarantees or assurances before you do anything?

I’ve been to Nepal several times during the Maoist insurgency. Unlike the average Singaporean who may boast of having travelled widely, I’ve actually witnessed riots and strikes. Suffice to say that an isolated incident or a snapshot of a certain newsworthy event is no indication of what is likely to happen to you when you are there. Of course, unless you’re into insurgency yourself (like Rambo), you must be cooperative with the folks who have a vested interest in your safety and observe curfew times, be alert and scan the faces of the locals for signs of unease. If they smile and go about their daily routine in a relaxed manner, you can be quite sure that it’s OK for that moment. When things change, you move.

On this trip to Mrauk U, I heard mortar bomb explosions when I was at Ko Thaung Paya east of town. According to my driver, the fighting was taking place some 15 miles away. He warned me to stay away from police stations as they are the favourite targets of the rebels. The first explosion was pretty scary, but subsequently, they came at 10 minute intervals and became easy to ignore. The town area was so peaceful that apart from the presence of foreign medical aid workers and refugee camps, there was practically nothing unusual going on. It’s such an irony that war chased the tourists away and made the place a lot more peaceful than during peacetime.

Sunset in Sittwe

Paya Ko Thaung

Trekking Around Hsipaw

The Goteik Viaduct

Pining For Pyin Oo Lwin

Yangon Memories

Knapsack Books

2023 Knapsack Treks. Donna Theme powered by WordPress
Manage Cookie Consent
To provide the best experiences, we use technologies like cookies to store and/or access device information. Consenting to these technologies will allow us to process data such as browsing behavior or unique IDs on this site. Not consenting or withdrawing consent, may adversely affect certain features and functions.
Functional Always active
The technical storage or access is strictly necessary for the legitimate purpose of enabling the use of a specific service explicitly requested by the subscriber or user, or for the sole purpose of carrying out the transmission of a communication over an electronic communications network.
Preferences
The technical storage or access is necessary for the legitimate purpose of storing preferences that are not requested by the subscriber or user.
Statistics
The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for statistical purposes. The technical storage or access that is used exclusively for anonymous statistical purposes. Without a subpoena, voluntary compliance on the part of your Internet Service Provider, or additional records from a third party, information stored or retrieved for this purpose alone cannot usually be used to identify you.
Marketing
The technical storage or access is required to create user profiles to send advertising, or to track the user on a website or across several websites for similar marketing purposes.
Manage options Manage services Manage vendors Read more about these purposes
View preferences
{title} {title} {title}